Recently, I was walking through a narrow street and saw a chilli and lemon tied on a thread and placed on the road. I was about to step on it, since you know, reckless! It got me thinking about this nimboo-mirchi totka that people have been doing for so long. Doesn’t it say so much about their disposition?

For those who don’t know, generally it’s to ward off negative energy, and is often kept at door entrances and stuff. But when you find it kept on crossroads or any path for that matter, the meaning becomes slightly different. This age-old Indian superstition is aimed at transferring negative energy to anyone who steps on it or unknowingly crosses over it. I mean, that’s what it has ended up becoming, even though earlier it wasn’t the case.

Traditionally, if someone in the house fell ill, people would use it as a symbolic “energy box” to ward off evil, believing it would absorb the bad energy. But in practice, it’s now become a way of shifting that supposed negativity onto someone else. The intention is clear. They want the negative energy to be transferred to someone else. They deliberately want to inflict this harm on anyone but themselves.

Now, since we know that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, you can see the mindset here: people who perform such acts deliberately want others to suffer instead of their own. Isn’t that callous? It already sounds inhuman, trying to pass on their worst misfortunes to another person who is also human. It could be their neighbour or a complete stranger, for all they care. This blunt disregard for anyone outside their family just shows how self-centred such actions are, and how little they think of others when it comes to their own comfort.

Our country is riddled with superstitions, no doubt about it, but this one is particularly absurd because it feeds on another person’s misfortune. It’s like saying, “We had this god-awful ailment, now we want it to be yours. Save yourself if you can!” Instead of finding a solution that helps everyone, people are willing to (at least in theory) transfer their problems to someone more vulnerable.

That’s so typical of some people’s mentality. If I were to find a broken glass bottle or even a thorny stick while walking down a path, I’d pick it up and move it aside so it doesn’t hurt the next person who might not be as attentive. But here, with this totka practice, they’re willing to harm the next person who passes by, just so their very own can be free of “evil.”

This “mujhe kya hai?” attitude has to go. All these bizarre rituals that disregard others’ well-being need to be completely eradicated. We need to focus on real solutions to our problems instead of offloading them onto others.

I once heard of a vendor who would collect these discarded lemons and chillies from the crossroads, make lemonade out of them, and sell it. Now that’s a blunt slap in the face of this weird superstition.